Biography:

Philippe McKenzie , sometimes credited as Pinip McKenzie , bornOctober 26, 1953in Mani-utenam , Quebec , is an Innu singer-songwriter considered a pioneer of indigenous folk music and the father of contemporary Innu music.

Philippe McKenzie was born in 1953 in the Innu community of Mani-utenam . His father having been sent to Rivière-du-Loup to study, there was apparently a break in traditions in the family. This break with the traditional life of the ancestors is said to have pushed Philippe McKenzie to claim and defend ancestral ways of life and rights 1 . At the age of 13, he began to play the guitar and in the early 1970s , he joined the Innu group Tamtam Boys. Around 1975, he recorded two albums in Innu-aimun with the Service du Québec nordique of Radio-Canada . It was within Philippe McKenzie’s group that Florent Volant and Claude McKenzie met 2 . This meeting gave birth, a few years later, to the group Kashtin 1 . In 1984, Philippe McKenzie and Florent Volant founded the Innu Nikamu festival . This festival of indigenous music and art, one of the largest in North America , takes place every year in Mani-utenam 3. It is considered to be at the origin of contemporary Innu music in addition to having inspired two generations of indigenous artists 2 .

In 2014, the Innu Nikamu festival marked his 30th anniversary and this celebration also marked his withdrawal from the public sphere 3 .

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